


In Safe Houses

by inbox



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Fallout Kink Meme, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, Post-Game(s), Snow, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 07:54:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3802618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inbox/pseuds/inbox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The light through the windows is watery and thin when he wakes up. Arcade is a solid wall of heat at his back, his legs wedged tight into the crook of Boone's knees, with one arm slung over him heavy with sleep. He snores like a bandsaw. The doc's fingers restlessly twitch out an endless pattern across the sparse hair low on Boone's stomach, a warm touch where his shirt has rucked up during the night.</p><p>Boone blinks into the dim light, and resolutely screws his eyes shut and tries to catch a wink more sleep before his imagination starts to race away from him. He can feel his cheeks burning, half from cold, half from something he isn't quite prepared to put a name to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Safe Houses

The doc cuts wood like he's born to do it, grunting with effort as he swings the splitting axe over and down with a twist of his shoulders. The green winter wood squeaks when he strikes it along the grain and it'll smoke like hell later if they're not careful, but it'll fill a potbelly stove and keep the worst of the chill from their bones.

“Good exercise,” says Boone, and spits his chew into the dead bushes by the safehouse door.

He's done his piece, hauling in buckets of snow to melt later, and shaking out the meagre supply of blankets and sheets folded away in dry lockers. There's not much of a support network this far east, not when the very few Followers who press this deep into the Rockies are surveyors like them, slowly charting out the old world and the new world both, breaking down the frontier into standard 1:25,000 maps and sending it back west, piece by piece.

Arcade rests the blunt head of the axe on his boot and rolls his shoulders, and pointedly ignores his audience. His laboured breathing creates a halo of fog around Arcade's head, catching the afternoon sun and giving him an aura of totally undeserved innocence that, inexplicably in Boone's mind, marries perfectly with the measured violence being enacted against innocent wood.

“Holler if you need help. You'n your tender hands.”

Arcade tells him to go fuck himself, and puts another piece of wet wood onto the chopping block.

 

* * *

 

The stove takes some finessing to get working right. It only starts to draw when Boone belts the chimney with his boot and dislodges a chunk of calcified soot, and it takes the best part of an hour for the backdraft of greasy white smoke to disperse from the small safehouse room.

They play cards by the stove while their meal is cooking, arguing over who cheats the most at caravan. Arcade cheats more, but Boone cheats better. The argument continues while they eat, thick wheat noodles and local dried beef biscuits that are more fat than flour, and only ends when Arcade triumphantly pulls out from his backpack a jar of sour caneberry preserves. They eat it straight from the jar, passing a sticky spoon back and forth as they sit in front of the stove and discuss the possibility of returning west soon.

They've been on the road for eight months. So far this season Boone has made sketches and measurements of a dozen mostly intact dams, years of scouting training finally paying off in a way that he felt slightly positive about. Arcade makes his own detailed notes about the locations of old hospital equipment and places where medicinal plant life abounds, filling pages with his narrow handwriting until he complains about getting a cramp in his hand.

It's not what either of them had envisioned themselves doing, but at least it's away from the Republic.

 

* * *

 

The wind whips up late at night, rattling the heavy safehouse door on its hinges and forcing fingers of snow through the cracks around the windows.

A wet towel under the door keeps the worst of the wind out, quickly freezing solid and trapping more heat in the room. Boone feeds more firewood into the stove, and pulls his sheets and blankets from his bed and his clothes from his rucksack. He shakes them out and spreads them over Arcade's narrow bunk, clothes on the bottom and blankets on top, making sure to knee the doc in the back hard enough to wake him up.

“Your noble sacrifice is appreciated,” says Arcade, rolling over and frowning as a scratchy woollen blanket lands on his face.

 _Shit on your sacrifice_ , mutters Boone and shoves him over. The mattress springs creak at their combined weight but it's warmer than his own bed, warmer than trying to keep his own body heat topped up. He rubs his feet together for warmth and blows on his hands, his fingertips stinging when the blood slowly creeps back to his extremities.

The cold snap is nearly a month early this year. It's a dangerous time to be this high up in the mountains.

“You need a shower,” says Arcade sleepily, shoving over the thin pillow of his rolled up sweater so they can both have a corner to sleep on. His wiry beard, unshaven and uncared for ever since they left the last town over a week ago, prickles the back of Boone's neck. “You smell like a barn.”

 

* * *

 

The light through the windows is watery and thin when he wakes up. Arcade is a solid wall of heat at his back, his legs wedged tight into the crook of Boone's knees, with one arm slung over him heavy with sleep. He snores like a bandsaw. The doc's fingers restlessly twitch out an endless pattern across the sparse hair low on Boone's stomach, a warm touch where his shirt has rucked up during the night.

Boone blinks into the dim light, and resolutely screws his eyes shut and tries to catch a wink more sleep before his imagination starts to race away from him. He can feel his cheeks burning, half from cold, half from something he isn't quite prepared to put a name to.

He's got enough to deal with when he wakes up proper. Not enough wood, not enough food, not enough safe passage down to the plains if he's been a fool and been let themselves be caught out by an early winter. Those things, they were important. They were worth thinking about.

He doesn't permit himself to think about anything else. Not the warmth, not Arcade's beard at his neck, and certainly not the dead weight of his arm across his flank.

 

* * *

 

The doc is up when Boone wakes again, shrugging into the heaviest pullover he's got and letting the sun pour in as he kicks the banked snow away from the safehouse door. He rolls over and stretches, and rubs the grime from his eyes as, outside and unseen, Arcade sets about taking out his energies on the stockpile of wet wood.

Boone looks at his maps and makes a mental note of the fastest and safest way down the mountain, the blankets soaking in the heat from the roaring hot stove, the grate open and the flames drawing hot enough to spill out and lick against the pans of watering simmering on the stovetop. He should get up – should give himself a wash while the water was hot and he had a moment of privacy, if only to get the doc off his back about the accumulation of a few days of honest sweat – but a warm bed is such a rarity these days. He balls up the makeshift pillow a little tighter and does the maths in his head, how many hours it'll take to hike to the nearest town via the old highway if the sun keeps in the sky and the wind doesn't blow again.

Outside Arcade sings while he splits wood, tuneless and enthusiastic in equal measures.

 

* * *

 

They eat a meal of powdered eggs, solid and salty and brick heavy in their gut, and bring in enough wood for the next Follower who might find themselves out east. Arcade says that the geologists will be around these mountains in Spring, Barney Deerhorn and his team, and it's fitting to leave the safehouse stocked and ready. They drag in the rest of the firewood and stack it against the far wall and leave the last box of powdered milk on a high self, and fold up the blankets between them, fold to fold and hand to hand.

Boone locks the door and hangs their copy of the safehouse key around his neck, and doesn't say much as Arcade fusses with the straps of his rucksack.

“Thank you,” the doc says offhandedly, and pulls out a strap out from where it tangled under the rifle sling, setting it straight and unencumbered. “For being an effective hot water bottle.”

He nearly says _anytime_ , too quick and a little too keen, then says it anyway. “Anytime.”

 


End file.
